This, of course, was baloney. We’ve already seen how God didn’t mind a bit of nooky. In fact, he wouldn’t have bothered making genitals so sensitive if he hadn’t intended them to be used. God would often sit back in Heaven and just laugh at the nutso things coming out of Paul’s mouth.
Other than the no-sex thing, Paul was quite the apostle, God found. Much better than the original bunch, who just wrote off some easy letters then got beheaded or stoned or fed to the Great Crocodile. When Paul preached, people listened. Maybe this was because Paul was just really good at PR, but more likely it was because all his sermons did involve sex, and there was nothing quite so titillating as being told in graphic detail all the things you shouldn’t do.
Even with all the publicity Paul was generating, sometimes God really longed for the good old days. He just didn’t have anything to do. The world was created and history was moving along at its own momentum now. Aside from a few appearances in the distant future, Constantine, Joan of Arc, Jerry Falwell, etcetera, he had nothing to do other than make circles in farmer’s fields. His Rubik’s Cube had long since eluded him, and he’d given up trying to figure out how they got the caramel inside the Caramilk bar. There wasn’t even anything good on telly!
How much more fun things were before! He’d so often intervene directly in events, because as his chosen people, the Israelites couldn’t protest much. But in addition to his no-sex rules, which people mostly ignored anyway, Paul had decided that non-Jews could participate in the new religion too. Sure, it stole converts from Zeus, but the thing about Gentiles was that they really preferred to run their own affairs. No deus ex machina to come changing things at the end for them!
So the gist of it all was, God was bored. The lawsuits were bogged down in jury selection (hard after all to find peers for God); Jesus was all holier-than-thou now that he’d done the Resurrection thing; and Satan was just being mean. Not even answering the phone when God called, and God knew he was home! Those Christians didn’t even talk anymore. They just wrote letters, long boring preachy letters. If God had realized how uptight they’d all become, he never would have destroyed Sodom in the first place. It was all about sin with these people. Everything was a sin! There just wasn’t anything to do anymore.
At first God thought that once he let the Romans execute Paul in their oh-so-standard persecutory way, things would liven up again. But no luck. Then God left his cigarette burning, in hopes that setting fire to Rome would liven things up, but even that only provided a momentary burst of pleasure, and Nero’s abysmal fiddling was more than bad enough to offset that.
And so God found that he’d come full circle. Centuries earlier, he’d created the Earth for something to do. Now, the only thing that gave him any extended pleasure was planning the end of that same world. Each scenario was more elaborate and bloody than the next, and though God doubted he’d ever actually implement any of them, he did leave his diary lying around where Jesus found it.
“Dad!” Jesus bellowed. “What in the hell is this?”
Guiltily, God crept out of hiding to confront his son. “Just some notes,” he said.
Jesus looked through the pages, reading the occasional bit aloud. “Four horsemen… seals of blood… Satan controlling??… Fox dominating Prime Time? Oh dad this is just cruel.”
“Well, it was just a way to pass the time. You know I’d never really destroy the world.”
“Oh no? I don’t doubt you’d do anything. I really sometimes think you have Attention Deficit Disorder. You never let anything last once you’ve grown tired of it.”
“I ain’t kicked your uppity butt out of my paradise yet boy.”
“I’m not a kid anymore Dad.”
“As long as you’re living on my clouds, you’re living under my rules.”
“Look Dad, I don’t want to fight. Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“I’ve got some friends down there so before you do anything drastic, you have to promise me I’ll get to go back. The first time I went, I didn’t even get to go to Disneyland.”
“Fine. I promise.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Good.” Jesus gave God back the diary. “So shall I go pass the plan on to some disciple?”
“Are there any left? I thought the last one fell off that Yak in Tibet?”
“No. John’s still on Patmos.”
“John? He’s like older than me now!”
“Exactly. People will believe him.”
“Sure you wouldn’t rather just write the plan down on some gold tablets and leave them in America for some dude to find?”
“What lame scheme is that? As if someone’s gonna believe that I went all the way to America to change plans when I was born and raised and died in Israel.”
“Fine. Do whatever you want.” As Jesus turned to go, God called him back. “Oh. I won’t be here when you get home. I’ve got a date.”
“Oh really? Athena again?”
“ ‘Minerva’ now,” God sneered. “Bloody Greco-Romans can never keep the same name. But yeah. Her.”
“Took you back again hey?”
“Yeah. She’s a great woman.”
“Well you behave. I know we disagree on a lot, but I do love you Dad.”
“Ah shit kid. Let’s not end it all mushy-like. This is the Bible. Not a Hallmark card or a long-distance commercial. You go talk to John. We’ll end it in fire and brimstone.” God chuckled.
So did Jesus. “That’s my Dad,” he laughed. “You’ll never grow up.”
“Amen to that!” God smiled mischievously.
Post-Script: Following the events you have just witnessed: Satan opened up the only unbeatable casino in Vegas; when the Second Coming was ignored (it was scheduled during the Series Finale of Seinfeld so no one was paying attention), the Apocalypse was delayed indefinitely and Jesus went to shack up with some old college buddies; and as for God, he travelled the world for a while as a one-man carnival show and was last seen sipping Mai Tais on a secluded tropical beach. He has continued to deny rumours of involvement in human affairs and has been unavailable for comment since the year 1832. Whether or not he will ever intervene directly again in the history of mankind is scheduled to be addressed on an upcoming episode of the X-Files.